2021-22 NBA Season Discussion

[Doctor MJ]

Question for people who followed the Grizz more closely than I did: how do you think they would have done last year if they did not make the Valanciunas for Adams swap? It seems to me that most of their improvement came from Ja JJJ and Bane just getting better, but I can't say for sure. I also got the sense that they could use a bit more offensive dyanmism which JVal can provide.

What do people think? How big of a factor was the Valanciunas for Adams trade in their success?

I'll say this:

Given how the Grizz played after benching Adams for most of the playoffs, I think it's clear that the team's excellent play was not dependent on Adams play itself, so it's really only a question of whether Valanciunas would have - and would have been allowed to continue to - gum(med) up the works and prevented the young core from growing like they showed they were capable of.

To me this is one of those situations where the GM and his advisors get some credit for knowing when it's time to take off some of the training wheels off...but it's the coach and his player development staff that really deserve the applause.

[parsnips33]

I get that there's a desire to separate "play style" from our overall evaluation of how good a player is - and I understand why. It feels like a purely aesthetic difference at times and a way to introduce bias in terms of who's game you like to watch more vs who is actually better.

But I think the desire to boil down player evaluation to "doesn't matter how you do it, whatever gets the highest [insert stat here] is best" doesn't actually help us understand much about the game, which I think is a shame. I think too often it refocuses the question to WHETHER a guy was good/better than X guy/top 10/etc. vs HOW was a guy good/etc.

Whether a guy was good is a short conversation. How a guy was good can open up to so much discussion about skillsets, strategy, and more

Maybe this is just my way of expressing my preference (probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not particularly good at math ) but I can't help but feel like the quality of discussion could be improved with more emphasis on the HOW

I feel targeted.

I freely admit I'm bothered when I see style preferences being used to say one player is better than others when all other evidence is telling us something different. Or even when style difference is being used to say things like the Golden State Warriors will dictate the future of the league if they win this title and if they don't every other team in the league is making a mistake. Like maybe, but probably not. As has been pointed out, its impossible to replicate how this team was built or that payroll.

I think our personal biases definitely cause us to overrate players we like how they play and underrate players who don't. For instance in the PG thread it was declared that Jason Kidd's style didn't lead to much positive impact on his teams. But then I go look at his teams and they all improved greatly with him and declined greatly when he left. But okay, let's dismiss that as just some of kind of wild coincidence not really attributable to Kidd, his on/off numbers are insanely good on those teams. But he plays "wrong" so people find reasons to dismiss him(the Nets played bad teams, he can't shoot--even thought that's more myth than reality, etc).



All that said, I agree that how its done is more important than I like to say it is--because how they do it obviously relates to how much impact they have. I just hate dismissing high impact done in a way that isn't currently in vogue or isn't a poster's view of how basketball should be played. So I push back against it.

I always appreciate your perspective Chuck. And I think you're right to push back when the dogma about how to play "the right way" buts up against real measurable impact. Kidd is a perfect example.

I think the great thing about this forum is there are so many different posters who all bring their own values and biases (with no negative connotation) to the table and it usually leads to great discussion. I just think sometimes that discussion has to be nurtured and protected from the instinct to just settle things with whatever the latest statistical model shows

[Texas Chuck]

My understanding is the JV/Adams trade had nothing to do with them thinking JV was in the way of the kids, but that they wanted that draft pick. That could be wrong, but that was certainly the reporting at the time.

I don't think the swap was particularly meaningful in their season. I think they would have still been a really good team if they had kept JV. But for the Grizzlies this will come down to mostly if Zaire pans out or not.

[tsherkin]

I think our personal biases definitely cause us to overrate players we like how they play and underrate players who don't. For instance in the PG thread it was declared that Jason Kidd's style didn't lead to much positive impact on his teams. But then I go look at his teams and they all improved greatly with him and declined greatly when he left. But okay, let's dismiss that as just some of kind of wild coincidence not really attributable to Kidd, his on/off numbers are insanely good on those teams. But he plays "wrong" so people find reasons to dismiss him(the Nets played bad teams, he can't shoot--even thought that's more myth than reality, etc).

I think anyone who actually watched Kidd realized that he had a certain degree of impact on his teams. The Nets in particular showcased this, though obviously the total result of his arrival in that first season is overstated because Marbury and Van Horn were injured the year before and Kittles didn't play at all and Kenyon Martin was only a rookie. But only so much, because a few years back most of those dudes were healthy. He did a great job in New Jersey. They won more with defense than with offense, of course, and were often quite bad offensively. This is where people look at Kidd and wonder "wtf are people talking about, why was he good," because his contributions as a PG came in atypical fashions, which speaks to your comment about styles. He rebounded, he defended disruptively (particularly pre-05), he enabled their transition game. He helped revitalize Vince Carter once that acquisition happened. He was a savvy game manager. I think he did a lot of things which helped winning basketball. He wasn't really a hot option for offensive wizardry, and of course there is a degree of offensive fetishism in basketball fandom, especially for positions where you expect major offensive value. Still, he had a couple of seasons (99 lockout and 02-03 come to mind immediately) where he was a lot better than his usual profile offensively as well, and his performance in New Jersey notably exceeded his performance elsewhere in his career aside from the 99 lockout season on average.

Kidd was good. There isn't a lot of room to argue about whether or not he was a positive impact player. He certainly falls short when stacked next to a lot of other offensive stars, because all the impact measures where he shows favorably have him pretty far short of what other stars have done, but he was still doing big things. The raw on/off for 01-02 and 02-03 in terms of team ORTG are actually far better than what his basic box score stuff says, and ORPM looks at him pretty favorably. Obviously, the fact that he was ambulatory chunder as a scoring threat was a huge problem for him in his career, but he had such a breadth of other available ways to contribute that he made himself useful regardless. And then as he discovered a semi-consistent three ball later in his career, it helped him considerably.

[parsnips33]

Having a really tough time contextualizing Steph's season in terms of his career to date.

If I had to win a playoff series, I'm not sure there's any version of Steph I'm taking over '22. His improvements on defense and just his poise offensively in dealing with anything a defense can throw at him are at all time levels. Even in his MVP years, you could at least get him a little shaken by putting length on him or hitting him with aggressive traps. He was just completely unbothered by any defense this postseason, even when the shot wasn't falling. It was interesting, during his prolonged slump this year, there was some speculation on "if this keeps up, what if teams stop guarding him like Steph Curry and the enormous gravity gets blunted". Well we saw Boston try that more or less and the results were very clear.

On the other hand, his numbers in the RS were uniformly down and it just doesn't make a ton of sense to think a guy is peaking at age 34.

[sp6r=underrated]

I wonder how Jerami Grant will fare next year in Portland. He is at his best when he plays a smaller role but he hated that. Maybe his tenure in Detroit has persuaded him to go a different way.

[Doctor MJ]

Having a really tough time contextualizing Steph's season in terms of his career to date.

If I had to win a playoff series, I'm not sure there's any version of Steph I'm taking over '22. His improvements on defense and just his poise offensively in dealing with anything a defense can throw at him are at all time levels. Even in his MVP years, you could at least get him a little shaken by putting length on him or hitting him with aggressive traps. He was just completely unbothered by any defense this postseason, even when the shot wasn't falling. It was interesting, during his prolonged slump this year, there was some speculation on "if this keeps up, what if teams stop guarding him like Steph Curry and the enormous gravity gets blunted". Well we saw Boston try that more or less and the results were very clear.

On the other hand, his numbers in the RS were uniformly down and it just doesn't make a ton of sense to think a guy is peaking at age 34.

I'd say what you're running into is that treating a season as if it is an object to be placed on a ranked list is taking an n-dimensional shape and boiling it down to a single number, and you lose a lot in the translation.

I think that ranking things gives us a powerful, and social, focusing agent that tends to make use look more closely at these phenomena that we would otherwise do as we sat there beer-in-hand enjoying the show, but in the end, you can only learn so much by impaling the butterfly.

I think the way you describe the dilemma makes clear the n-dimension shape these performances truly have in your mind, seek to better flesh out the shape in your mind, and if words come to mind on the matter that you can share, please do.

[parsnips33]

Having a really tough time contextualizing Steph's season in terms of his career to date.

If I had to win a playoff series, I'm not sure there's any version of Steph I'm taking over '22. His improvements on defense and just his poise offensively in dealing with anything a defense can throw at him are at all time levels. Even in his MVP years, you could at least get him a little shaken by putting length on him or hitting him with aggressive traps. He was just completely unbothered by any defense this postseason, even when the shot wasn't falling. It was interesting, during his prolonged slump this year, there was some speculation on "if this keeps up, what if teams stop guarding him like Steph Curry and the enormous gravity gets blunted". Well we saw Boston try that more or less and the results were very clear.

On the other hand, his numbers in the RS were uniformly down and it just doesn't make a ton of sense to think a guy is peaking at age 34.

I'd say what you're running into is that treating a season as if it is an object to be placed on a ranked list is taking an n-dimensional shape and boiling it down to a single number, and you lose a lot in the translation.

I think that ranking things gives us a powerful, and social, focusing agent that tends to make use look more closely at these phenomena that we would otherwise do as we sat there beer-in-hand enjoying the show, but in the end, you can only learn so much by impaling the butterfly.

I think the way you describe the dilemma makes clear the n-dimension shape these performances truly have in your mind, seek to better flesh out the shape in your mind, and if words come to mind on the matter that you can share, please do.

I wanna print this out and frame it Extremely well put

And rest assured, I will continue to share my thoughts on Steph Curry on this board, whether people like it or not

[parsnips33]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

[Texas Chuck]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

Oh I had something like this very much in the realm of possibilities. I remember making lots of posts telling people to slow down prematurely crowning them and any time Kyrie is involved you have to account for the chaos factor.

[Fadeaway_J]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

I remember posting on here about the high disaster potential of that pairing...

[jalengreen]

As much as 2022 was a failure for the Nets, I can't help but note that injuries were their downfall in 2021 and not really anything else.

[parsnips33]

As much as 2022 was a failure for the Nets, I can't help but note that injuries were their downfall in 2021 and not really anything else.

The pandemic certainly didn't help either

[MartinToVaught]

As much as 2022 was a failure for the Nets, I can't help but note that injuries were their downfall in 2021 and not really anything else.

On the other hand, Kyrie is injury-prone and Harden came into that season out of shape on purpose to force his way to the Nets, likely contributing to his hamstring injury.

Furthermore, all three of those guys are known headcases, so even if they all stayed healthy, there were no guarantees that they wouldn't have melted down anyway.

[MartinToVaught]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

Plenty of us were pointing out the obvious potential downsides involved in the NBA's two most fragile divas teaming up at the time. We were just dismissed because of the usual "they have too much talent not to make it work" rationale, despite the fact that there's been many stacked teams over the years that collapsed due to egos/dysfunction.

If there's a lesson to be learned from the Nets' collapse, it's that basketball is as much a social game as it is a game of strategy or skill, and just throwing a bunch of talent together with no regard for their personalities is a bad idea.

[Doctor MJ]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

I remember posting on here about the high disaster potential of that pairing...

Yeah, while I think it's fair to say that lots of crazy things have happened that weren't specifically predicted, I think a lot of people at the time of the original signing thought:

"Oh my god, is KD really that foolish to tie himself to Kyrie?"

One funny thing to me:

As folks probably remember, it wasn't that long ago that KD was going on Bill Simmons podcast, getting drunk, and just letting loose on a number of episodes.

KD then decides to join up with Kyrie, who Simmons had just experienced through his Boston Celtic lens.

Since then, no more drunken KD pods.

Coincidence?

Nope. Simmons on a pod recently talked about telling KD at the time what it mistake it was to join up with Kyrie, and that KD seemed to distance himself after that.

One of course could conclude this is just some kind of sour grapes thing coming from Simmons...but honestly, Simmons claimed he did exactly what I'd have expected Simmons to do, and Simmons then claimed KD responded exactly like I'd expect KD too.

This was a situation where Human A falls under the spell of Human B and just won't listen as the rest of the world tries to have an intervention.

I really do wonder what Durant is thinking now about Kyrie. At this point, if KD were someone without any emotional attachments, he shouldn't be doing anything further to keep his future joined together with Kyrie. Had KD arrived at the point where he can see this clearly, or not?

[Doctor MJ]

If there's a lesson to be learned from the Nets' collapse, it's that basketball is as much a social game as it is a game of strategy or skill, and just throwing a bunch of talent together with no regard for their personalities is a bad idea.

Yes, but I'll also add:

There's a lesson to be learned here in terms of what it means that basketball is a fluid-field team sport, and what you need to do to expect to beat all comers.

KD and others have been talking about being "real hoopers" who "just wanna go out there and hoop" ever since his time under Kerr's thumb. To me this is pretty clearly a case of a player who feels that coaches tend to overcoach, and that if you just let the best of the best do their thing, you'll be unstoppable.

But that doesn't apply to the role players who simply have to have a clear sense of what their responsibilities are out there in order to maximize their impact.

And it really doesn't apply to defense where there's absolutely no substitute for playing together as a practiced unit, and playing hard.

What KD & co have hopefully learned at this point is to be the best team, improvisation needs to come within the context of a well-coached plan. Once your team has the fundamentals down, then yes, it's often best for a coach to leave the players alone when they do something different then he expected them to do...but you have to put in that work up front to get there.

I have to be honest, I have a hard time keeping un-irritated when I think of the fact that these guys didn't GET this given that I'm sure they've all had coaches in the past try to drill it into them. I think clearly when you personally succeed, it's easy to convince yourself that the stuff that you didn't think mattered, didn't matter.

[Peregrine01]

This Brooklyn situation is nuts. I don't think anybody expected things to go this way when KD and Kyrie first signed

I remember posting on here about the high disaster potential of that pairing...

Yeah, while I think it's fair to say that lots of crazy things have happened that weren't specifically predicted, I think a lot of people at the time of the original signing thought:

"Oh my god, is KD really that foolish to tie himself to Kyrie?"

One funny thing to me:

As folks probably remember, it wasn't that long ago that KD was going on Bill Simmons podcast, getting drunk, and just letting loose on a number of episodes.

KD then decides to join up with Kyrie, who Simmons had just experienced through his Boston Celtic lens.

Since then, no more drunken KD pods.

Coincidence?

Nope. Simmons on a pod recently talked about telling KD at the time what it mistake it was to join up with Kyrie, and that KD seemed to distance himself after that.

One of course could conclude this is just some kind of sour grapes thing coming from Simmons...but honestly, Simmons claimed he did exactly what I'd have expected Simmons to do, and Simmons then claimed KD responded exactly like I'd expect KD too.

This was a situation where Human A falls under the spell of Human B and just won't listen as the rest of the world tries to have an intervention.

I really do wonder what Durant is thinking now about Kyrie. At this point, if KD were someone without any emotional attachments, he shouldn't be doing anything further to keep his future joined together with Kyrie. Had KD arrived at the point where he can see this clearly, or not?

I don't think KD joining Kyrie was mostly about him wanting to play with him but more about him wanting to leave the Warriors. He has great reverence for Kyrie's skills but Kyrie was also the only legitimate guy he could team up with at the time.

Anyway, I'm not surprised at all how things fell apart for these Nets. You put this many divas on the team at the same time with no established culture and this is what tends to happen. I only really feel bad for Nash in all of this.

[MartinToVaught]

He has great reverence for Kyrie's skills but Kyrie was also the only legitimate guy he could team up with at the time.

He could have played with Kawhi. He chose Kyrie instead. Most likely because, unlike Kawhi, Kyrie was the clearly inferior player to KD and therefore not a threat to his ego like Curry was.

[Doctor MJ]

I remember posting on here about the high disaster potential of that pairing...

Yeah, while I think it's fair to say that lots of crazy things have happened that weren't specifically predicted, I think a lot of people at the time of the original signing thought:

"Oh my god, is KD really that foolish to tie himself to Kyrie?"

One funny thing to me:

As folks probably remember, it wasn't that long ago that KD was going on Bill Simmons podcast, getting drunk, and just letting loose on a number of episodes.

KD then decides to join up with Kyrie, who Simmons had just experienced through his Boston Celtic lens.

Since then, no more drunken KD pods.

Coincidence?

Nope. Simmons on a pod recently talked about telling KD at the time what it mistake it was to join up with Kyrie, and that KD seemed to distance himself after that.

One of course could conclude this is just some kind of sour grapes thing coming from Simmons...but honestly, Simmons claimed he did exactly what I'd have expected Simmons to do, and Simmons then claimed KD responded exactly like I'd expect KD too.

This was a situation where Human A falls under the spell of Human B and just won't listen as the rest of the world tries to have an intervention.

I really do wonder what Durant is thinking now about Kyrie. At this point, if KD were someone without any emotional attachments, he shouldn't be doing anything further to keep his future joined together with Kyrie. Had KD arrived at the point where he can see this clearly, or not?

I don't think KD joining Kyrie was mostly about him wanting to play with him but more about him wanting to leave the Warriors. He has great reverence for Kyrie's skills but Kyrie was also the only legitimate guy he could team up with at the time.

Anyway, I'm not surprised at all how things fell apart for these Nets. You put this many divas on the team at the same time with no established culture and this is what tends to happen. I only really feel bad for Nash in all of this.

KD & Kyrie were extremely tight ever since the Olympics, and literally I heard stories of KD, Kyrie & Harden all together bandying about the idea of playing together while KD was still in GS, so no, I don't think Kyrie was simply the best available star. To me it really seems like KD really, really liked Kyrie and loved the idea of building something "their way" together.